The general public was invited for a science speed-dating evening during the ESEB meeting 2016 in Lausanne, to discuss about "What is evolution"? Starting from the diversity of beers and cheese and the importance of microorganisms in our every day life led the discussion towards the importance of sustainable agriculture and environmentally-friendly pest-control methods. Sharing how my research connects to those topics with high school teachers, students and many curious minds created a great informal platform to inform about the techniques a scientist can use to answer fundamental questions in Biology, how it can lead to new applications or simply help us understand the amazing diversity that surrounds us to better protect it.

While enjoying local swiss beers and cheese, interactive discussions navigated around the broad importance of the brewer yeast that I also use as a micro factory, or in vitro expression tool to study the function of biosynthetic enzymes that make up moth pheromones. By learning about the activity of those enzymes, we increase the potential of using the insect's own genetic machinery to develop natural pheromones.

As an example, Chesnut trees in Lausanne (and in many places across Europe) are increasingly infested by the Horse-chesnut leaf miner, a tiny moth. Affected leaves collected in the neighborhood helped me illustrate the importance of fundamental research and molecular tools to understand how ecological systems function. The public was amazing and generally interested in learning about How pheromones work in nature, how diverse are the perfumes that make up pheromone blends, what about butterflies who are typically visually-oriented? This could only open up for sharing a favorite topic: pheromone evolution, reproductive isolation and biodiversity. Thanks ESEB and all participants!